


The History of the World

by ionthesparrow



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Erie Otters, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2016-01-01
Packaged: 2018-05-08 08:29:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5490512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ionthesparrow/pseuds/ionthesparrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A broken bus. An unscheduled delay. The third metacarpal of the right hand. A game missed. A name called first. Another break. The beginning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The History of the World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [asimplechord](https://archiveofourown.org/users/asimplechord/gifts).



> First, let me just say a sincere thank you to the organizers of this exchange, and to asimplechord for providing such wonderful prompts. I hope you enjoy the story.
> 
> Many thanks also to othersideofthis and Dark_Eyed_Junco for looking over early drafts of this. And to pressdbtwnpages for acting as my theological consultant <3
> 
> content warnings: some discussion of injuries

* * *

 

The sound of him breathing is the first thing, and the last thing, and everything in between. 

 

 

Dylan hits the button on his phone and listens and then says: “Hello? Connor? Hello?” 

There’s a weight on the line, an additional hitch, before Connor says, “Hey.” 

Dylan swallows. “How bad is it?” Because he knows better than to ask: _are you okay?_

“It’s broken. It’s – my collarbone. We’ll know more – ” Connor breaks off and sighs, like the words are already something that have been repeated to him one too many times. “We’ll know more in the morning. When there’s less swelling.” 

He pauses again and adds, “Probably a couple months, though. At least.” 

Where Connor is, it is very late Tuesday night, and where Dylan is, it is very early Wednesday morning, and Dylan can feel every one of those miles. His eyes close and want to stay closed. The phone is heavy in his hand. Dylan hunches farther forward on the edge of the bed, elbows digging into his knees. He breathes, and all those hours and miles away, he listens to Connor breathing, too. 

Part of being Connor’s friend is knowing all the things not to say. 

Part of being Connor’s friend – one of the tricks to it – is being able to ignore all the elephants in the room, even as they pack in so tight as to press against your chest, push back against the force of your lungs. 

Dylan mastered that trick a long time ago. But sometimes that means the things left to say are thin on the ground. 

Dylan closes his eyes and pictures Connor as he saw him last, serious and bound for Edmonton. Then he pictures Connor at fifteen, in his brand new Erie jersey. He concentrates and pulls up memories of Connor in a slew of minor hockey jerseys, some of which they shared. Some of which Dylan only saw from across the ice. But in all of them, Connor is exactly where he should be – close enough to reach out and touch. Dylan forces an exhale. “You fucking idiot. You dumb motherfucker. Who told you it was a good idea to go sliding into the boards at speed?” 

Connor’s voice rattles in from the west. “I didn’t do it on purpose, jackass.” 

“Must be getting shitty advice on how to play out there in the fucking boonies.” 

“I guess you think you could do better?” 

Dylan can hear Connor reaching for levity, but he can also hear the strain, the long, quiet ache buried in Connor’s words. “Of course.” And then he coaxes, “come on, Davo. It could be worse. We could be on a bus, six kilometers outside Belleville.” 

He gets a real laugh then, low and throaty. A laugh like a warm summer night, open and unfolding in front of you. 

This is how Connor sounds at the best of times. And when he sounds like this, with Dylan’s eyes closed, it feels like Connor’s still right next to him, less than an arm’s length away. 

 

 

Dylan doesn’t have to close his eyes to remember that bus trip, the calendar fresh folded over to 2014 – the back half of Dylan’s rookie season, and him coming newly off his first stretch of missed games. 

The whole Great Lakes region had had more snow than anybody could remember in a long, long time, but because the O was the O they were making the five hour trek up to Belleville anyway, right in the thick of it, with the snow coming down so thick and from so many directions that they might as well have been driving through one of those souvenir snow globes, one that somebody had given a good, hard shake. 

They hit the five hour mark well away from where they should be, and when they hit the six hour mark, the bus gave a hard rattle and cough. Hard enough to shake the sleepers, and to pause the card game Connor and Dylan had going. Connor’s long, white fingers curled his cards close to his chest and he looked past Dylan out the window, like there might be something to see in that solid mess. 

Dylan felt the heat coming from the vents die, then after a beat, like a delayed punch line, the TV screens flickered, and the image of Will Ferrell all geared up in elf costume died too. 

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Foxy said. Dylan turned to the back of the bus to look at him, and was in time to see him spit into his bottle, a carefully calibrated gesture of disgust. Foxy was one of the only ones of them old enough to have developed a serious affection for dip, and despite the proclaimed no-tobacco-of-any-form-on-the-bus rule, was allowed by the coaching staff to spit with impunity into a much-abused plastic water bottle. Mostly because, Dylan believed, the coaching staff saw how integral Foxy was to maintaining order, and did not want to be left alone to deal with the horde of sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds that made up the majority of their team that year, without him on their side. “Jesus Christ,” Foxy said again. “This fucking league.” 

They made it a bit further, but eventually the bus gave one more pneumatic cough, and drifted, and came to rest in the snow piling on the shoulder with all the gentleness and dignity of a beached whale. 

They all sat and listened to the telltale sound of the engine stuttering and failing to catch and the muttered cursing of the coaching staff at the front of the bus. And they sat while phone calls were made, attempting to stir someone of some authority in the small snow-soaked hours of the morning. And they waited together for those phone calls to be returned. 

“This sucks,” Connor said, and he dug the point of his shoulder into Dylan’s side. 

Dylan hummed agreement to that, swiped at the fogged-over window, and then wiped the cold condensate on his fingers across Connor’s cheek. 

Connor prodded him again, this time with an elbow. 

“We’re like, less than ten kilometers from the hotel,” Pelech called. “Just let us _walk_ the rest of the way.” 

“At least if we were walking, we’d be warm,” Raddy agreed. 

Another voice added, “I want to fucking sleep in a _bed_ ,” punctuating each word of the complaint with a kick to the seat in front of him. 

“We’re, like, basically at my dad’s house,” Gaunce said, squinting out the window. “Can we just go there?” 

Coach K surveyed them and their growing mutiny and frowned. Coach K had come up in the Dub, and as such, had no sympathy for the hardships of OHL road trips. “Sit tight,” he said, as if the whole situation were a two goal lead, and then he turned his collar up, pushed open the bus doors, and set out. Presumably for the glow of a truck stop’s sign, visible in the indeterminate distance. 

Someone sighed, loud and put-upon. 

For a few minutes after that, the silence was punctuated only by the sounds of sniffling, and the wet, rattling cough half the team had, and the squeak of shoes against the rubber floor. 

Connor pushed his face into Dylan’s shoulder and mumbled something that sounded like he was just repeating, “this sucks” again, with a degree of added exhaustion, if no less fervor. 

They were all of them achy. Tonight had been Dylan’s first game back, with all the awkward false starts that entailed. And Connor had been out, wearing a brace on his ankle that none of them were allowed to talk about. 

They lost. 

They lost, and now six hours later, pushing into tomorrow, they were on the side of the road, roughly six kilometers outside Belleville, but going nowhere. Dylan cleared the window again and looked to see if anything about the situation had changed. A snow-blower truck was working its way down the opposite side of the highway. He watched all the individual flakes get mashed into a one slushy jet stream. All of them forced into flight, a hesitation at the peak before, bound by the same rule of gravity, they all fell. 

Dylan looked away, and then down at the top of Connor’s head. 

Connor smelled like wet wool and the sweat of close quarters, and under that, like soap and a combination of things that had become so familiar the components were no longer possible to distinguish. 

Coach came back half an hour later, shoes and the cuffs of his pants soaked, with melting snow running down his coat, and his cheeks an alcoholic red. 

Mayo called out to him, “How come we’re still just sitting here?” 

Coach fixed them with a look. His face said he was half a breath from throwing in the towel, saying _fuck it_ , and going off to coach hockey in the CIS. Which everybody knew was hardly hockey at all. “The hotel is gonna send vans,” he said, flat. “We just gotta sit tight.” 

Someone sneezed. 

“Nothing will ever be worse than this.” Connor’s breath was hot and damp against Dylan’s neck. 

Dylan shrugged, looking down at him. He had his doubts. “I’m holding you to that, Davo,” he said. “Gonna remind you that you said something so stupid, later.” 

“You always bring up all the stupid shit I say.” 

“Well,” Dylan said. “Someone has to.” 

 

 

“I remember that,” Connor says. There’s a wistful note in his voice. A fond bit of yearning that Dylan wishes he could carve out of the air, as if the sound were something physical that could be captured and kept. 

In the morning, Dylan knows, he will be asked about this conversation. No matter that they won their last game. No matter that Brinksy’s riding a hot streak. This conversation, which the reporters will have guessed had taken place, will be what they want to hear about. And Dylan will have to figure out what he can and cannot say. 

“Dylan.” Connor’s voice has gone high and plaintive, almost a whine. “Are you still there?” 

“I’m still here. Of course I’m still here.” In the quiet, he hears Connor shift and then a sharply drawn breath, and it sits heavy in Dylan’s gut that two thousand miles away, Connor is in pain. “They gave you pills right? You got the good stuff?” 

“It doesn't hurt. As long as I don't move it doesn't hurt.” 

Dylan frowns. “It for-real doesn't hurt or it for-hockey doesn't hurt?” 

Connor stays quiet. 

“Connor – ” he starts. 

“Come on, Dylan,” he says. “You know.” 

 

 

The moment before Dylan was hit – the hit that took him out – the very first hit that made it all breathlessly real – there had a been a confusion of screaming voices and a prickling of his skin, and a between-the-shoulder-blades sense of _something’s about to happen_. Then the whole world suddenly yawed and twisted, gravity gone into spin cycle, and there had been a moment of weightlessness infused with the anticipation of an inevitable fall. It had not felt like he’d been hit from one direction; it had felt like the whole world had exploded. 

Connor sat with him after, in a room that was supposed to be quiet. But all that meant was that all the sounds of the things Dylan wasn’t participating in bled in from outside. Through the walls, he could hear the clatter of sticks being stacked, the tear and crumple of tape, music, and voices laughing, celebrating the win. 

Connor sat with his hands folded motionless in his lap and his eyes roaming restless over Dylan. He made an endless string of jokes. 

“Thank god you’re not funny, Davo,” Dylan said. He brought a hand up to press at the ache between his eyes. “It hurts to laugh.” 

Connor inhaled. Even with his eyes closed, Dylan knew where he was; he could hear him, could feel Connor shifting, and then came a touch at his side that Dylan leaned into. 

Connor said, “You’re going to be alright,” in his calm, solid way. And he had said other things. Mumbled, quiet things; things that were maybe not meant to be held up and looked at in the light of day. And he had held Dylan in a way that maybe would have drawn attention, if there were any eyes to see. 

Whatever response Dylan could have made to his voice and his touch, caught and lodged in his throat. He kept himself curled against Connor’s side, a closeness that was okay in that fresh, unexamined moment, and might not ever be afterward, but that didn’t matter because that moment was a lifetime. 

_You’re going to be alright_ was a comfort, but it was also a command. Connor was by no means the only one to give it. And there was no _no_ , no _not yet_ , only moving on and forward and _yes._

So later, Dylan had played. And then sat in that snowbound bus, still nursing a headache he wasn’t supposed to have. But there was no way he was not going to play, not when Connor was also out. 

After all that, the game in Belleville was canceled. 

_Too much snow_ , they said, with perfectly straight faces. _Unsafe driving conditions._

Dylan wasn’t sorry to see it missed. 

All of them spilled into the lobby of the hotel and looked at their coaches. Their coaches looked back, with expressions of flat and muted terror at the idea of keeping twenty-odd teenagers entertained and out of trouble on an unscheduled snow day. 

Like in most times of minor strife, Coach turned them over to Foxy, and in addition, trusted him with a significant portion of the trip’s slush fund. 

Foxy crossed his arms and looked at them. 

Foxy’s authority by no means sprang from a surplus of talent. Erie, back in those days, was still a place for discarded and damaged older goods. But to Dylan, still fresh-faced, Foxy’s status – both of being the impossibly advanced age of twenty years old and being a four-year-vet – was enough to instill a marked respect. (That, and the fact that Foxy had been the one to pull him aside at the beginning of the season to say, “I got no fucking problem with you being queer. Just try not to flaunt it too much. My dance card’s only got ten spaces this year, right?”) 

That veteran authority was enough, though, to get them to follow him to a pool hall and arcade that was in walking distance from the hotel and still open, and to accept his more-or-less equitable distribution of coins that he got from the guy behind the counter, who was wearing a quilted plaid shirt, and a cowboy hat, and an expression of mild shock at the interruption of what he must of thought was going to be a dead-quiet day. 

The pool tables were shitty, uneven things, and half the games were broken. The real fun was in watching their teammates, nine parts shit talk to every success. Dylan watched them over-chalk their cues and say god _dammit_ after every missed shot, in the way that only someone pretending to know what he’s doing says. 

But there were only so many hours you could spend zoning in front of machines, when the jangle and the flashing lights were hell on the headache Dylan wasn’t supposed to have. And only so many hours you can spend standing when you’re wearing a brace but no one is supposed to see you limp. He kept an eye on Connor and Connor kept an eye on him, and because neither one of them could ask, _are you okay_ , Connor just said, “Let’s go back to the hotel.” And once there, he ran his fingers over a sign in the lobby advertising the pool, and said, “Let’s go swimming.” 

The pool was in the basement. A dim space, the air heavy and warm with the chemical smell of chlorine. Connor stripped off his t-shirt and the ankle brace that no one was allowed to talk about. He dipped his toes into the water and then dove, one quick, clean motion. 

Dylan waded in slow, stopping when the water came up to his waist. He pushed at his shorts, puffing and floating around his legs in the water. They were both wearing their Otters branded gym shorts, and the fabric probably wouldn’t ever be the same after the chlorine, and Steve, the equipment guy, would probably bitch at them about that, but down at the deep end of the pool, Connor was relaxed and moving through the water with a smile on his face, and Dylan didn’t care about anything else. 

Dylan looked at his hands under the water, the way the skin looked pale and greenish and at the shifting patterns of light moving across them. He took a breath, curled his toes around the edge of the step. Dylan sinks like a stone in water, and it made the flat, unknown expanse of depth an anxious, treacherous thing. His experience in the water was limited to pools that could only be used a couple weeks out of the year, limited mostly to summer nights dangling his feet in the water and watching June bugs make suicide dives and the taste of stolen beer going warm too fast. 

He looked up. Connor was floating facedown in the water, and Dylan’s heart caught and skipped. “Connor!” 

Dylan splashed out into the deep end, an awkward lunge to grab him. He shook Connor and Connor lifted his head, looking surprised. 

He blinked at Dylan, water running down his face. “What?” 

Dylan shook him again, struggling in the deep end to hold on and at the same time keep his head above the water. 

Connor grinned at him. “It’s nice and quiet down there.” 

Dylan stopped flailing for a moment and started to sink. “Jesus, Connor. _Jesus._ ” 

Connor made a face. “You read too much into everything.” He reached back, stroked through the water with those long arms and then twisted and dove again, leaving a trail of small bubbles that rose around Dylan as he made his way awkwardly back to the side. Connor skimmed along the bottom of the pool, sleek and efficient, moving under the surface as easy as if he were the reflection of something overhead moving across the face of the water. _Jesus_ , Dylan thought. He could have been a swimmer. 

He could have been anything. 

Dylan held onto the side with one hand, the other paddling the water’s surface. He startled when Connor grabbed him from behind, fresh curl of anxiety crawling up his spine when Connor’s arms locked around him and pulled him away from the wall, off his feet. 

“Knock it off.” Dylan grabbed for the side. “Connor.” He tried to make himself sound serious without sounding afraid. 

Connor just grinned. “I got you.” 

Dylan made another fruitless grab for the wall, but Connor had pushed them too far out, and so he held onto Connor instead. His hands gripping too hard onto that slippery skin, nails leaving half-moons in an attempt to gain purchase. 

“I got you,” Connor said again. “Relax. Lie back.” 

Dylan tried to make his breathing slow, taking one long breath and then another. “I don’t want water on my face.” He was aware he sounded ridiculous, but was still unable not to say it. 

“I won’t let you get water on your face.” 

Dylan swallowed. “I don’t want to float off.” 

“You’re scared of the weirdest things,” Connor said. 

Dylan closed his eyes and took another breath. It would take too much energy to argue to the point. Instead he loosed his grip on Connor, and after giving him one more sharp look, he let Connor ease him back until he lay flat on the surface of the water. All sound faded, muffled down to nothing and the only sensation was the water lapping at his skin and Connor’s hand at the small of his back. 

Such a light touch for such a steady anchor. Connor didn’t let go. 

They went up to Connor’s room after. Dylan snapped his wet towel at him, the vague taste of adrenaline still bitter in his throat. That led to wrestling, which led to Connor pinning him down on the bed, and the slide of damp skin, and Connor’s breath hot in his ear. 

Connor was working on pretty good wood. Which meant they were going to have sex. Which would make it the sixth time they’d had sex and then not talked about it. Which, Dylan felt, must be some kind of record. 

Connor’s fingers were tight around his wrists. He was breathing hard and he kept swallowing, shifting his weight over Dylan, agitated and unable to settle. It wasn’t difficult to see why: his wet shorts clung to him, making a clean, distinct outline of what was underneath. 

It was the easiest thing in the world not to talk. To roll in the sheets instead. To push his hips against Connor’s and let Connor push against him. 

Regardless, Dylan started, “Hey – ” 

Connor let his wrists up, but he didn’t slow. 

“C’mon, Connor – the door – ” he tried, even as he lifted his hips up to let Connor pull the fabric away. “The lock. Don’t want to scandalize the maids.” And part of being Connor’s friend was knowing that, even here, there were things you had to watch out for, and jokes you could and could not make: the lock, yes, but Dylan couldn’t say anything about them selling the news to the press, because that would have acknowledged there was something to sell. 

Connor grumbled out a sigh, right up against Dylan’s skin, close enough for Dylan to feel it against his cheek. He rolled off, and the air was cool where he had been. Connor was up just long enough to flip the latch shut and ditch his own damp shorts before coming back to the bed, back to where Dylan, operating on instinct, reached for him. 

Connor returned and brought back the slip-slide of skin, and the rough drag of his fingers across Dylan’s shoulders. Dylan traced the fuzz of hair low on Connor’s stomach. He pressed against the firmness of the muscle underneath. Connor’s body: shaped by hockey, just like one day, Dylan thought, hockey will be re-shaped by him. 

When Dylan closed his eyes, he saw Connor’s body moving through the water again. Dylan thought again that he could have been a swimmer; he could have been a runner. A thousand lifetimes ago Connor would have been the one they carved onto Grecian urns, would have been captured in marble, would have been a star in black and white. And Dylan might be leading his own story, but he’d never be the hero. Not like this. 

Dylan locked his arms around Connor’s neck and pulled him in and lived for the untidy gasping sound Connor made against his mouth and the hesitant warmth of his lips against Dylan’s. 

Connor kissed him, and then he kissed his face and his hands and his hip. Mouthed along the ticklish, sensitive skin at the inside of Dylan’s thigh, looking at him, right at him, the whole time. 

Dylan thought: Connor will always be this flushed, and he will always look at Dylan with his hair falling in his face, and he will always know Dylan inside and out, and he will always be this close. 

It was at least part a lie, certainly, but in that moment, it was true. 

 

 

Connor’s _you know_ hangs in the air. 

“Yeah, I know,” Dylan admits. He casts about for something else to say. “It’s just gonna be a couple months. It’s not forever.” But he knows that under the crashing weight of any given moment, forever hardly matters. 

 

 

Almost exactly a year ago, Connor had made Dylan taste the same sort of fear. Dylan had watched Connor go down swinging, and then go off the ice entirely and disappear down the hall. 

They weren’t allowed to panic. They weren’t allowed to even ask questions, but Dylan went down into the hall the first chance he got, with the sweat and stink of the game still clinging to him. Connor was still in the hallway, waiting with his hand encased in an air cast, standing with Sherry Bassin, who had his hand resting on the back of Connor’s neck. Both of their heads were bowed, and when Connor looked up, his eyes were red. 

When it happened, the crowd had screamed, a roar that moved through the stadium and seemed to crest and break, to fold in on itself and echo back around. And in the days after, people had screamed questions and demanded answers, already forming and re-forming a million sharp opinions about what it meant to break a hand and what it meant for that particular hand to break. 

But long before any of that, Dylan had stood in the hallway, and Connor broke away from the old man he was standing with and approached Dylan. It seemed to take a moment for Connor’s eyes to focus on him, and Dylan’s gaze fell from his face to the cast. 

Connor moved all at once. He grabbed Dylan’s shirt. He twisted the fingers of his good hand in the fabric, pushing Dylan hard against the wall. “Don’t you dare let this team start losing,” he said, his eyes fixed on Dylan’s. 

The pitch of Connor’s voice attracted attention, and down at the other end of the hall, Sherry Bassin and the men he was standing with, looked up. Dylan watched their faces watching Connor, eyes sharp on Connor and welling with a thousand different kinds of concern – some good, some bad, but all piled one on top of the other until the bottom layer had long been turned to dust. 

Connor swallowed and stepped back. 

Dylan dragged him away from everyone, away from all those prying eyes, away even from the worried looks of their teammates. Dragged him deep into the twists of halls and small rooms of that building that Dylan would know blindfolded. And there, in a room with a cracked and dirty floor, and among piles of unused signs and sawhorses, the air full of the smell of mildewy wood, there Connor finally let his chest heave. He took one gasping breath, and he looked at Dylan, something trapped and feral in his gaze. 

Connor had opened his mouth, but his lips worked without producing sound. He shook his head. “I can’t – I can’t – ” And his voice broke. He squeezed his eyes shut. 

Dylan felt the weight – the weight of everything – pressing down on his chest, pressing down on both of them, making the air itself thick and useless, and a viscous panic rose in his throat. 

When Connor opened his eyes again, they were white-rimmed and desperate. He looked back over his shoulder, towards where they’d left Sherry Bassin. “He said I’d come back. He said I’d come back and it would all be fine. He said I was the last great thing he’ll ever do.” Connor stared at Dylan. “Why would he say that? How could he say that?” Connor’s voice was wrecked by the end, and he broke off, eyes falling shut. 

Sherry Bassin was an old man, with liver-spotted hands, with gold bridgework in his teeth and a ruined rasp of a voice. He was fond of cryptic, agricultural sayings, like: _it’s not just the horses that panic when the barn burns down._ Or, _he’s mad as a cryptorchid that someone’s taken two tries at._ And despite the fact that Dylan could never parse their meaning, Bassin would lay a heavy hand on Dylan’s shoulder, look at him and say, _duck hunting is a great deal of waiting, Dylan. A great deal of waiting._

Like most of the men who owned and ran teams, he’d had money for so long he had to find new ways to make his life complicated, and who knew why he did the things he did, or why he said the things he said, but one thing was clear: he loved Connor. 

He loved Connor like the boulder must have loved Atlas, like the eagle loved Prometheus. He loved Connor so hard and so sharp it hurt, and Dylan swore that no matter what, he would never be that. 

Dylan’s hands skated across Connor’s face. Across skin gone red and blotchy, a careful touch to where his eyelashes stuck in clumps to wet cheeks. Dylan settled his hands as light as possible on Connor’s shoulders, resting there while he tried to think of what words would comfort without adding weight. He stared at Connor. “Don’t punch the goddamn glass, Davo,” he said, keeping his voice as light as he could with Connor vibrating and about to shatter in front of him. “You’re sure as hell not going to draw a penalty against the glass.” 

Connor opened his eyes. He blinked at Dylan in silence for a long moment before his mouth twisted into what was almost a smile. He groaned, looking up at the ceiling like he was asking for intervention from above. He coughed out a laugh, and shook his head and took a step back from the edge of panic. “We get bench minors. Why not glass minors?” 

“Don’t punch the fucking bench, either,” Dylan said. And then he said, “Come here.” 

Connor leaned into him. Let Dylan fold his arms around him and bowed his head enough to rest against Dylan’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” Connor said, his hidden face making the words just barely audible. 

“You’re so stupid,” Dylan said into his hair, throat so tight it hurt and so full of ache and worry and love it was almost impossible to say. “You’re so fucking stupid.” 

 

 

“I _know_ it’s not forever.” There’s a snap of irritation in Connor’s voice. Dylan knows this voice, too. This is the prickly version of Connor, the one who will not be soothed. The impatient Connor, and Connor is often impatient. 

Connor is great. He expects those around him to keep up. And could, in his less shining moments, look down on those who failed to do so. And even if it was mostly not with judgment, but rather with the gentle disappointment and bewilderment of someone who understands intellectually that not everyone can do what he does but cannot for the life of him figure out why, it still cut. 

“God, this sucks. I wish – ” Connor starts. He stops, but the words are already out. 

Dylan bites his tongue, because there is a certain, inherent bitterness in listening to Connor wish for things, when he is in Edmonton, and Dylan is here. Dylan stretches his neck. He tucks the phone under his chin and rubs his hands against each other to chase away the cold, and he looks out the window of the bedroom in his billet house, at the dark, in Erie, where he still is, while Connor is far away. 

 

 

Sometimes it was a lot of work not to resent Connor, that’s just being honest. In the last game of last season, Dylan put up six points, and yet one of the first questions out of the reporter’s mouth had been, _what are your thoughts on Connor not playing in this game? Do you think that gave you the opportunity to grab the scoring title?_

As though everything Dylan had accomplished was only because Connor had gracefully stepped aside. 

“I hate you,” he said to Connor, later. And he meant it, even though it hurt to say. 

Connor’s brow furrowed. “It’s not my fault – ” 

Dylan was still holding his gloves, and he threw them at the wall, held up his hands in a gesture of warding, anything to get Connor to stop talking. “I’ll love you again tomorrow, but today I hate you.” 

He walked away, and he thought about how two years ago, just before Christmas, he and Matt and their parents had gone down to New York to watch Ryan in his first NHL game. And he thought of Ryan frowning at him over dinner while Dylan relayed the latest news about the Otters’ season. 

He told the story of his and Connor’s last powerplay goal, and the win over London, and started to talk about all the plans in place for how the team was going to manage with Connor away at World Juniors, except that Ryan had narrowed his eyes and interrupted him to say, “Careful with this road you’re going down. Or one day, someone’s gonna write the story of Dylan Strome and it’s just gonna be a list of things that happened to Connor McDavid.” 

Dylan’s mouth snapped shut, startled into quiet. And he realized, with a bit of a shock, that he had finally stumbled onto something his older brother didn’t understand. 

That night in the locker room with Connor, Dylan had walked away and stopped at the far side of the room. As far away as he could get in their tiny world. He could hate that day, but as soon as the puck dropped anew, Connor would once again be his brother in arms. 

Later, when their playoff run had slammed to a fierce and firey halt, Connor was the one who went out to face the media. They were teenagers; they were hurting, and they were afraid – talking to the press was like trying to speak a foreign language, with all the hesitations and pauses that entailed. But Connor, who stumbled like the rest of them, faltered and blushed like the rest of them, simply lifted his chin and put his shoulders back and went out to them without anyone asking, like he knew it was his job to do so. And that day, Connor was their shelter. 

 

 

Dylan rubs a hand across his face. His eyes ache; his head feels heavy. “You can wish for things. I mean, obviously – ” He says it in case Connor heard something in his silence, like some of Dylan’s resentment might have bled out into it. Dylan rubs a hand across his face again and wishes for a fluency that was never his. “I didn’t mean to be a jerk. You can certainly wish you weren’t hurt.” 

Connor says, “Mostly I wish you were here.” 

 

 

He makes Dylan’s heart stop so often Dylan ought to get used to it. 

Dylan’s not alone – the way people talked about watching one of Connor's shifts for the first time, it was as though they had witnessed magic, or the proof of god's hand working on earth. And you had to sympathize – it must be hard to love a sport your entire life, and then, in the span of thirty seconds, realize you had not yet even begun to dream of what was possible. 

When they were drafted, it was like a whole new world had stumbled onto what Dylan had known for years: Connor is extraordinary. 

Although sometimes it was difficult to reconcile the player who no one could touch with the kid who, for example, had gone after a spider with his billet brother’s baseball bat while Dylan, in the background, had yelled, “Overkill, Davo! Overkill!” It was hard to reconcile the boy who looked at Dylan with huge, dark eyes with the man people had marked down as a future great. A hero. A savior. 

They were drafted before Connor was any of those things. They were drafted even before they were men, really. They were certainly drafted before they had any sense – just the hope of sense and the hope of being men and the dream of being men who played hockey. But that didn’t stop grown and rational adults, people who should have known better, from looking at Connor like he was magic already delivered, and speaking to him with wet eyes and in voices that croaked for nerves. After these conversations, they shook his hand with what strength was left in them, boneless and sweaty, as though the rapture had come and gone. 

Dylan never liked these people. They were so caught up in what they thought Connor might become that they couldn’t see the vivid, awkward, temperamental, perfect boy right in front of them. Dylan would make a face behind these exchanges, scrunching up his nose to let Connor know what he thought. And when no one was looking, as if to prove everything Dylan believed right, Connor would catch his gaze and roll his eyes. 

They were all, of course, supposed to be mature and polished – the embodiment of promise. But the way all those people looked at Connor – and maybe, at Jack – was different. And to Dylan, the loudest strangeness lay in being asked, over and over again if being drafted third would be a disappointment. 

No one asks the kid who goes 59th if he is disappointed not to be 56. No one asks the kid at 210 if he is disappointed to be drafted at all. Dylan knew what they wanted him to say: that they wanted him to admit resentment or anger. And he could never get it through to them how backwards that was, how Dylan would always belong to the cluster of them that had been thrown together at the top of the class that mythical season, and that they would always be his. That they were bound by this shared experience that no one on the outside would ever understand, no matter how many questions they asked. 

Dylan watched his new peers closely in the week leading up to the draft, as they were taken around, paraded through all the new kinds of light that could be found in Florida. He watched Jack, and he wondered if Jack felt the same strangeness in the questions that assumed he was locked in at number two. 

Jack watched both of them back, and walked around with this secret smile, like he knew a thing or two about a thing or two, and always with Hanifin close beside him, radiating that patrician brand of calm. All of them circling Connor, aware of him and aware of each other, as creatures moving at the edge of light are aware of each other – such a precarious position that you have to keep track. 

Dylan decided he and Jack were both conscious of the heat of that spotlight aimed at Connor, although perhaps they disagreed about whether it was misdirected. 

Jack’s awareness of him, of Dylan, had something else in it, though. Something that came out when they were thrown together in all those tight, nervy spaces. Jack looked at him as though Dylan had said, _this is something you could have, if you wanted._ Although that was something Dylan never said aloud, and there was no space to say it. Jack looked at him and grinned that wide, shark-toothed smile. Jack, with his face that dared you to laugh, and his body that just dared, and his already irritating tendency of being right. 

Sitting together, he had leaned into Dylan’s space, reached over and grabbed Dylan, high on the inside of his thigh, and Dylan could feel the strength in the blunt press of his fingers. 

“So there is meat on you somewhere,” Jack said, and laughed a breathy, soundless laugh. 

It was a thrill. Not just the heat of that solid grip, but the way he put his hands on Dylan, right in front of Connor, without so much as a hesitation, much less a request for permission. 

Connor’s mouth made a sharp line and he followed Dylan up to Dylan’s hotel room when they were finally freed for the night. He closed the door and pulled the blackout curtains shut, throwing the room into a mild, cool dark. And he looked very much like that was the last reasonable thing he wanted to do. 

He reached for Dylan – uncoordinated and impatient in a way he was never allowed to be in in front of people, when the sandpaper parts of him were worn smooth for public consumption. Dylan loved his disorderly, nasal sighs, and the unselfconscious looseness of his mouth, and the rough way he tugged at Dylan’s clothes. The way he looked up, when Dylan was sprawled over and across him, his hands reached up to trace Dylan’s face. Dylan loved the way Connor’s eyes took him in, and Connor could always see not just all the things Dylan was, but all he could be. 

Connor held his face. “You’re not – ” He hesitated, his gaze skating away, his fingers tightening. “You don’t do this – with me – just because I need it, right? You want this?” 

Dylan froze and blinked at him, and then rolled off onto his side. “Jesus Christ, Connor.” 

Connor was red, and still not looking at him right on. 

“Jesus. That’s probably not the _most_ fucked up thing you’ve ever said to me, but it definitely ranks. Top five for sure.” 

“Dyls – ” 

Dylan fell back against the bed, thumped against the pillow. After a beat, he stretched his hand out to take Connor’s, and wove their fingers tight together. Both of them lay staring up the ceiling, touching only where their hands were linked. Dylan tried to slow the rise and fall of his chest, tried to think of what the words would be that could express the great vastness of what Connor means. 

Connor took a breath. “I want you with me. I want you next to me.” His words came out in a tone of admission and dropped one by one into the quiet between them. When Dylan glanced over, Connor was frowning up at the ceiling. Connor took a breath before continuing. “Sometimes – sometimes I wish you weren’t as good as you are, so that I could have you with me, instead of off doing your own thing. I want you with me all the time.” 

And trust Connor to ask, when he asked for anything at all, for the impossible. 

Connor looked over at him. “But you wouldn’t – then you wouldn’t be you. I know that,” he said. “I know.” 

Connor fell quiet, and Dylan could hear the distant sounds of people moving outside the room, the thump of footsteps and muffled voices. He could hear the low, constant roar of the AC unit. He could feel it’s breeze bringing up goose bumps all over his skin, his heart thumping in his chest, and under that he swore he could feel the centripetal force of the planet’s wild swing, pressing them all in place. He held tighter to Connor’s hand, and he could feel the roughness of Connor’s callouses. He rubbed his thumb over the scar on the back of Connor’s hand. The one so fine and faded now it could only be revealed by touch. 

He looked at Connor, and Connor looked back at him, steady, as though here, on the eve of a night that would change everything, they had all the time in the world. 

Dylan still didn’t have the words, so instead he went to him. Rolled back towards that warmth and tucked himself close to Connor’s side. 

Connor opened his arms and brought him in with a shaky exhale that Dylan wasn’t sure how to read. Connor touched him like he thought there was a possibility Dylan might not have returned, and Connor fucked him with hands so tight around him that there would be bruises on his arms and hips. Pressing and grappling, and each slide wringing out a stuttered breath. He made Dylan gasp. Dylan closed his eyes and leaned his face into Connor’s and turned his mouth up to Connor’s mouth. He touched the tip of his tongue to Connor’s crooked tooth; ran his fingers through his newly cropped hair; touched all the places that were his, as though he could leave a mark, a layer to ward the world away. 

And what he gave to Connor, Connor gave back, until the energy looped between them, and Connor kissed his jaw – or started to kiss his jaw, then seemed to lose focus, his breathing acquiring that wet, unsteady hitch that always meant he was close. Connor clung hard to him. Dylan wrapped his arms around him and held on. He held him through it, and he thought about how they’d never have this exact moment again, even if they lived to be a hundred. He kissed Connor’s temple. The crown of his head. Every part he could reach. 

And he couldn’t help himself; the words slipped free. He said: “I love you.” Even though everyone was always trying to tell Connor that they loved him. 

 

 

“I wish you were here,” Connor says again, from a thousand miles away. He sighs, like a final acknowledgment that Dylan’s not. Connor McDavid, giving in to reality. “Tell me how things are going there.” 

 

 

How things were going in Erie was like this: 

Dylan was racking up points, and wearing the C, and discovering the myriad tiny weights that letter added. 

That morning, Dylan had leaned against the boards, trying to relieve a knot in the muscle of his thigh by digging a knuckle into it, and watching Neumann throw himself after the puck in way that was impressive in its gracelessness. He watched Neumann slam into the boards. Two and a half months in the league; you’d think the kid would have worked out how to stop by now. “I feel old,” he told Coach K. 

Coach K was standing next to Dylan, but he didn’t take his eyes off Neumann, and Dylan knew his face well enough to read the line of exasperation etched into his forehead for what it was. “You’re eighteen. Nothing should make you feel old.” 

At fourteen, Dylan had shot up five inches in what felt like a month, and the ache in bones used to wake him in the middle of the night. He wondered if that was what old age would be like. Or if there was more wisdom involved, and when exactly that wisdom might show up for him, since he clearly didn’t have it now. There had to be something, though, to explain how Neumann and the other rookies could be only two years younger, but that Dylan could feel such a gulf separating him from them. 

Neumann had actually blushed and stuttered over meeting Dylan for the first time, as if Dylan was someone of some importance. Dylan didn’t feel like whatever Neumann seemed to think he was. Authority and the innate seriousness that Dylan associated with authority did not come natural to him. Maybe he needed to make himself look more like the players he had looked up to, pick up the way they spoke, or adopt some of their habits. He considered for a moment whether he ought to take up chewing tobacco. But then, knowing his luck, he’d probably just end up jittery, with black teeth, and be none the wiser for it. 

He left off digging at his thigh and straightened. He watched as Neumann finished the drill sloppy, cut the corner, and at the end almost careened into Raddysh The Younger. Dylan winced. He glanced again at Coach K, noting his stiff posture. “You’re about to make us put the pucks up, aren’t you?” 

Coach K grinned, like the prospect of the team’s impending bag skate amused him, and Dylan felt reaffirmed in his belief that the O was a league played in exclusively by the direct descendants of sons of bitches, and the only ones worse were the guys who stuck around long enough to coach. 

Coach K raised the whistle to his lips. 

Dylan, like the shining beacon of maturity he was supposed to be, set off for the red line, and managed not to roll his eyes. 

Their skates hissed and echoed up and down the ice. The building was empty, but it wasn’t hard to imagine it full. They’d been drawing big crowds. They were off to a hot start – Dylan’s primary job these days was keeping Brinksy rolling – the puck and the stick and the ice were all working in chorus for Brinksy. He was magic in that way that hockey sometimes was, and the thrill and the art of his game brought people in. 

But even their raucous crowds and the energy that spilled and eddied through them couldn’t keep Dylan from thinking about what might have been. Dylan watched the people and the building and the game, and compared without really meaning or wanting to, with what it all would have looked like at an NHL game. 

Erie, in the stark and unforgiving light of this season, looked like what it was: the last edge of something pushed hard up against an inland sea. The streets sometimes felt narrow, and the air dour and cold. And when he looked at the wet, red-brick buildings and the skyline of steeples and the smokestacks, or even out over the lake with the waves etched into it by the wind – Dylan’s mind returned again and again to the hot sky and bone-bleached light of Arizona. 

To Arizona. To the west, where destiny drew all things. And to the NHL, which was the real goal, the height they’d all be straining towards. The real world – or at least the real stage. And having been thrust out once into this world, it was impossible not recognize Erie for the bubble it was. 

And how things were going in Erie was also like this: 

Connor was gone, the time having come for him to put away childish things. Sherry was gone, finally done in by the darkening glass of time and luck. And what abided had merit, certainly, but the edges of the spaces those two left behind were still jagged. 

It was the end of an era. And the particular heartbreak of being in a place you love that is nevertheless not where you want to be. 

 

 

Dylan thinks for a moment about what he wants to say. What in all of that there are words for, and which of them he can say aloud to Connor. 

He clears his throat. “So, we’re in Mississauga, right? And Brinksy – ” Dylan breaks off, smiling, thinking again of Brinksy’s champagne cork style of play and his laugh like fast water over rocks and the spark in his eye like he thinks he can get away with anything. Dylan pictures him as he looked the night of this story: dark eyes full of unquenched confidence and a bright flash of smile. “And Brinksy decides he needs to take Lodnia and Neumann to Cheetah’s – ” 

Connor breaks in with a groan. “Brinks should know better.” Cheetah’s is in the middle of the featureless plain of strip malls and asphalt that formed the run up to the airport. The kind of place where the tables are bolted to the floor and everything is made of a material than can be hosed down. A windowless, black light-saturated place, anonymous as any of its brand of fun usually were. Although this one boasted an enormous mural of its namesake: a prowling cat who glowed an eerie, incongruous blue under the strobe. Only a rookie would be tempted by the vague shape of women’s bodies advertised in the signs for Cheetah’s, and once you were there, the dominant feeling was usually one of regret. But it’s a mistake they’ve all made. 

They were all hunters of adrenaline, and if there were no boards to throw yourself into, then sneaking out into a wet night and thick dark looking for some unexplored corner in a small world would work almost as well – even if the reality of the destination left something to be desired. Connor had always been strangely comfortable there. Connor – who even back then kept getting put on TV, who kept get shoved at famous people to shake their hands – Connor had always seemed fine with those sticky floors, and the half-warm beer, and with getting called _darlin’_ by women whose best days were behind them. But then, it was a place where people made a point of never looking at you straight on, where everyone was supported in their imagined privacy, so maybe Dylan shouldn’t have been surprised. 

“Adams – the new assistant coach?” Dylan shakes his head, even though Connor can’t see. “He was supposed to be doing bed checks, but as far as I can tell, he’s only here because Coach K wants a drinking buddy for the road. So, of course I have to be the one to drag everybody back.” Dylan had grabbed his jacket and headed out into rain that didn’t even have the decency to be snow. Walked those dark blocks to the sound of airplanes roaring overhead and the steady swish-hush of tires on wet pavement and his own voice in his own head, saying over and over: _fucking rookies. Fucking goddamn rookies._

He sighs, quick and loud, so Connor will know how put out he was by all this. “They’re wasted, of course. I get them back to the hotel, and Lodnia picks a fight, right in the parking lot, right under Coach’s window. I had to practically tackle him to get him inside.” Dylan pauses. “God, even we weren’t _that_ stupid.” 

Connor laughs and hums what might or might not be agreement, but he doesn’t argue. “And then what?” 

“Oh, you know. The usual. Everybody passed out. I did have to talk Neumann out of using Vitamin Water to brush his teeth.” 

“Gotta appreciate that he had the instinct to do it at all.” 

“I guess.” Dylan trails off. “I don’t know. Lodnia’s not talking to Neumann. Brinksy’s pissed at me for being pissed. And the rest of the team is pissed at all three of them, on account of them being idiots.” He sighs again, and this time it comes out tired. They’re doing good now. They have so much promise. Dylan just has to keep it going. 

Connor is rapping his fingers against something; Dylan can hear it. “You need to whip out _The Notebook_ ,” Connor says. “A good group cry will set everybody straight.” 

That was one of the tricks Connor had pulled out when simply willing everyone to success wasn’t working. He’d picked it up from Connor Brown, although Dylan was pretty sure Greg McKegg was the first to come up with the idea. Connor though – he had perfected the mix of high expectations and occasional, well-placed group catharsis. Connor was, in all ways, a hell of an act to follow. Dylan rubs at a spot between his eyes, chasing an ache. “You’re probably right.” 

Connor hesitates. “You’re doing a really good job, Dylan.” 

“Yeah, well.” And it’s embarrassing how fast those words make his throat go tight. “So are you.” 

Connor puffs out a short laugh, but he’s smiling. Dylan can hear it. Connor takes a breath. “I should let you go, I guess. It’s late.” 

“Technically it’s early.” Dylan’s alarm is set for six. It won’t be long before it goes off. 

“Even worse.” 

“Maybe.” Dylan eyes the horizon, looking for any hint of the day kindling. He opens his mouth to say something, to say everything, and when that doesn’t work, he closes his eyes and says, “Yeah. You need your rest, too. You’re gonna rest up, right?” 

Connor makes a skeptical noise. “I’ve got, like, a million doctors’ appointments scheduled in the next few days.” 

“Well.” Dylan swallows around the lump in his throat. “Take at least one of those days to rest, okay?” 

“You don’t need to worry about me,” Connor says. Then he says, “But thank you.” 

“Connor – ” What he wants to say is tidal. What he wants to say is a forest fire in full roar, is the sun at noon, is the vast dome of the night sky. What he wants to say is the pounding of falling water and the adrenaline of a leap. But what are those words? Where do you find those words? Dylan breathes, and all those hours and miles away, he listens to Connor breathing, too. 

“Come and see me?” Dylan asks. “When you guys come out east? If you can?” 

“If I can. If I can, of course.” And it’s the thing Connor’s sounded the most most sure of all night. 

Dylan smiles into the phone. “I’ll be glad to see you,” he says, and it comes out softer, muffled maybe, because the words rest behind and under the weight of all the things he can’t say. 

Or maybe doesn’t need to say, because Connor answers, “Me, too.” Just as quiet, but sounding just as sure. 

Dylan thinks, this is what it means to be Connor’s friend: that no one moment will devour them, that they’ll navigate these upheavals and these wounds, and even Connor’s greatness. And that in two years – in ten – in fifty – when they are at their peak, when they are at their fall, Connor will be by his side in whatever way he can. 

With him when it’s easy and when it’s hard; when he is near and when he is far away from Dylan. And if those sound like vows, let them be vows, because theirs is a bond forged of blood and sweat and hours, the meat of it in the day after day after day of loving. 

And as for whose story it is: it’s theirs. 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the Thomas Carlyle quote, ""The history of the world is but the biography of great men" - which I think we can all agree is suspect ideologically, but a great quote nonetheless. 
> 
> The scriptural allusions are almost all to the KJV, and I'm _pretty_ sure I stole the phrase "the direct descendants of sons of bitches" from a Norman Maclean short story, but don't hold me to that, okay?


End file.
